Robin

Riddle me this, riddle me that,...what's red, gray, and yellow that acts so humbly and mellow? A bird as graceful as this might be very hard to miss. I, the Riddler (just kidding), have had my fill of Robin. You might know him as Boy Wonder, a Teen Titan, or most commonly as Batman's trusted sidekick, Robin has been portrayed through several incarnations over the years, namely Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, and Damian Wayne. I custom made a batman costume from scratch and was like, wait a minute, what about Robin? I figured I might as well complete the dynamic duo by custom making a robin costume.

There are two reasons, I know Two-Face bare with me, why I chose to do a Robin costume. One is due to the completion of the dynamic duo. Two is due to a liking of the character. I remember watching Teen Titans when I was younger and always liked Robin.

The first reason that I constructed a Robin costume was due to completion of the dynamic duo. It was kind of like, I had Batman and I needed Robin to complete the famed duo.

The second reason is because I think the character is cool. As I said above, I use to watch Teen Titans when I was younger and was intrigued by Robin. What was it about Boy Wonder? Was it the fact that he's sidekick to Batman, a member of the Justice League? Was it because of his signature staff? Or maybe the fact that Damian Wayne is Bruce Wayne's son and a member of the league of assassins? I guess it will remain an enigma, a mystery that even the Riddler couldn't solve.

Now that we've discussed the why, let's discuss the how.

The Robin costume is broken down in three components: the mask and hood, the body/torso, and the legs. Like my batman costume, the robin costume had its dilemmas and as such was a lot of trial and error.

The mask was custom made from another light black jacket and was secured to my face via black electrical tape. The hood just happened to be a maroon red color and was part of one of my hoodies that I wear overtop a t-shirt and below my custom robin shirt. The collar around the neck is from another light black jacket, with the underside being smeared with yellow oil pastel.

The main part of the body is the robin shirt that I made from scratch. It consists of a maroon shirt with ab pieces that I custom made. The underlayer of the abs is black while the upper layer of the abs is deep red. These custom pieces were made using red, maroon, and black oil pastels in addition to brown bag paper. The famed R symbol is a custom design and is featured on the one chest plate as well as in the middle of the two chest plates. Yellow hexagons as well as an upper collar bone and abdominal plate were made to supplement the design. The sleeves of the shirt are in a mesh gray material wrapped with black electrical tape. The harness and the blue graduation gown are used from the batman costume that I made to incorporate the cape with the hood. The gauntlets are adorned with custom yellow hexagons, gray mesh, and red fabric rimmed around the cuffs of the gauntlet. The gloves are the same from the dark knight costume. The green shoulder pads are from an old green shirt that I had lying around. The belt consists of a red and black scarf, a brown belt, two walkie talkies, a piece of gray foamboard with scrapes in it, a circular led light with a custom robin symbol adorned to it, and lastly another circular led light.

The legs consist of dark navy jeans, two arm sleeves from a black windbreaker jacket to simulate the boots, and lastly light blue shoes.

In addition to all of the above, I also made a short staff for the costume using a piece of wood and black electrical tape.

Whether you know him as Boy Wonder or Robin, Batman's sidekick is a prominent member of the bat family as well as the Teen Titans. Now if you excuse me, I have to go and confront the Riddler and then later make sure that beast boy isn't in one of his moods again. Sighs.